The Chook Poems

Recently, after a friend, Sarah (who has an amazing blog @ A Wine Dark Sea), experienced an attack on her flock of hens by several stray dogs, I promised her I would post my chook poems here. 

The chook poems were written a long time ago. Many of them appeared in my first published collection (with Michael Heald and Roland Leach) Shorelines: three poets Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995 (now out of print). Before Shorelines "Mangiare alfresco" (1992), "The Thursday Fox" (1993), and "On finding white feathers" (1994) were published in the Weekend Australian back in the days when Barry Oakley was the Literary Editor there. Barry gave me one of the nicest compliments I have ever received when he said: "I just can't resist your chook poems."

"Mangiare alfresco" recently received new life when it was selected for WritingWA's "22", and "On finding white feathers" was featured in the South Perth Poetry Park (Neil McDougal Park, South Perth).

The chook poems worked their way into my life at a time when my family and I lived in the Perth hills. My writing desk was located in front of a huge window that looked out onto our backyard, a bush block, with our flock of free-range hens (and the occasional wet rooster) parading by. During that period of time we nurtured several households of chooks, loving them, and grieving for them when sickness, old-age, or fox/dog-attack decimated our flock. Valuable lessons were learned. Along with the large doses of humor that arise from sharing your life with a hoard of feathered individuals, the simple, cruel tragedies of the backyard crept into those being enacted by the larger world around us. For example, in "The Thursday Fox", the story of Bobbie Cullen, a student at Curtin University and a victim of domestic violence who died when I was pursuing studies in creative writing there, seeps into a poem about a fox attack I've never forgotten: the dark, tortured night when I, with my son, Clifton – who was only about 10 years-old at the time and very, very brave – ran blindly around in the bush trying to save our hens ahead of the fox coven committed to beheading them a step ahead of us.

Woman at Desk with Writing Space

Her writing space is in her head, sleeping,

hiding between its cotton sheets, it goes

snug in the place behind her ears and eyes.

Sometimes it’s there when she’s away: sitting

on a bench at the lake, in a clearing

in the woods, on logs in the chicken run ­–

once – amidst a herd of cows. Would it run?

It wouldn’t jump-start! She suspects sleeping

was on its mind. More commonly, clearing

its throat loudly, it is in her car. Goes

skidding around corners, sighing, sitting

frozen at stop signs. Blue lights in her eyes.

It fires over dirty dishes, its eyes

running with onion’s scent, but daily runs

leave it puffed in the driveway or sitting

exhausted in her chair. When she’s sleeping,

hand in hand with dreams - no spare room - it goes

about dusting cobwebs, firebreak clearing, 

washing the floors for visitors, clearing

fog from the bathroom mirror. To its eyes,

her desk is a mess but it likes it. Goes

cursing to the landlord: its stockings run

catching on splinters from her page - sleeping

cat on cushion. Her writing space, sitting,

jumps when the phone rings, hides away, sitting

on the edge of the curtain rail, clearing

its line of sight to catch the deep-sleeping

trailer with its overflowing cat’s-eyes,

beer cans, bike tyres, junk, time for a dump run

with leaves. The rake that broke yesterday goes,

says her writing space. And as the sun goes

down, its rays highlight the paper sitting

on her desk with coffee rings. A dry run

to the chook yard with scraps, her mind clearing

ashtrays, dust from the keyboard. Her space eyes

the livestock’s feathers, ruffled from sleeping.

Out the window it goes, to the clearing,

hens sitting, scratching, blinking lidded eyes -–

writing space on the run: writer sleeping.

Boy

For Clifton

The boy in the paddock

down the road

has frost on his eyelashes.

His hen was paralysed, dying.

He’d placed her in the nesting box

near the morning’s eggs,

and closed her eyes

against the sunlight.

He cried on his way back through the trees –

‘Spider webs in my eyes.’

The boy is watching the henhouse –

breath, making mist, trails

through the railings of the gate.

Mangiare alfresco

He’s a featherbrain,

a feather duster. He’s been caught

feathering his own nest.

He’s a rooster stalking up

and down the chicken run.

Shut-in bird bedraggled by rain.

He’s stalking up and down

the fence. Black and white.

Not soft. Wet. Stringy.

Water bonds feathers to bone.

At the corner of the yard, he turns,

tail feathers, like bridal trains

behind him, duck and follow.

A parson’s nose. He’s a parson’s

nose in a baking dish

bubbling in his juices.

Crisp. Brown. Salty on the serving

dish. On the counter.

The parson’s nose. First to go.

Next, drumstick.

His huge legs stalking featherbed.

Feet, up and down in the mud, march.

Disappear. Appear. Turn.

His voice an angry buck, buck. No crow.

No breeze. Christmas kitchen dish.

The roast, the hot, hungry

trace of basting Buff Orpington.

He stalks, walks like a Sergeant Major,

round and round the chopping block,

around the axe.

On Finding White Feathers

In the corner of the shed,

my favourite: a small, white Silky hen -

found in a nest of wings and straw -

quite dead.

She was a good breeder.

I relied on her

to increase the flock,

now she’s decreased it - by one.

She’s the fourth this week.

I’ve lost an English Game Cock,

a Bantam and a Plymouth Rock

crossed with something else.

Some days there is a body,

sometimes none.

A hole under the fence

of the chicken yard

can mean one more in my garden,

I am making compost with feathers.

I’ve closed their door for the night,

a log, new-felled, pressed firmly against it.

I stack rocks around the wire

jamming my hand between them,

lose skin, bleed.

Loss pierces my swelling thumb –

it is sharp as the swift yellow beak

of a small, white hen hoarding eggs.

The Thursday Fox

for Bobbie Cullen

The rubbish truck’s late again. It’s Thursday.

A fox has breakfasted on the hens. Eggs

and laying pellets combined, a kind of

hybrid omelette on the floor of the coop.

And the garbage bags, Glad, on the road verge

are full of headless chickens, and I hate

the way the fence collects loose feathers, hate

hens for losing their heads on a Thursday.

Midday, and I wash dishes on the verge

of tears. Outside: cat, striped yolk-yellow egg-

white, with magpie carnivals from tree. Coop’s

so empty. Their shadows blend, a kind of

melting: the bird, the cat, the wire, and of

steam, dishwater, window rivulets. Hate

the way soapsuds dry my skin, my flesh cooped

up, this body-house. Rubbish, next Thursday,

will be dull compared to this – fertile eggs

and guillotined bodies wait on the verge,

and will I know what’s missing next Thursday?

Will I wake, alone, sense the absence of

rooster crow, my body between sheets – eggs

absent from pantry, and summon up hate

for fox? Whose hands held the axe on the verge?

Not mine, they’re dry, no evidence. The coop?

Lock up? Convert to vegetable patch? Coop

with cucumber, marigolds on the verge,

pumpkins like perfect golden suns. Thursday-

time: a battery-driven clock which speaks of

bed-making rituals, detergent, fox-hate

congealed on towels. No slow breakfast, no eggs

for cakes or child-delight. No scrambled eggs

on toast, no Sunday brunch, no walks to coop

with scraps – no clustering, dumb birds. I hate

the way soap-suds dry my skin - but verges

and cats crouch over their slack bundles of

feathers. It’s a white, black and white, Thursday.

No hens hoarding eggs. Silence verges on

the grasstrees, vacant coop. The silence of

the graveyard now, after the Thursday fox.

A Letter to my Chooks

Please don’t poop on the doormat.

When you wake at 4am –

and the moon floats

on a luminous cloud –

please don’t practise the lyrics

of your favourite songs.

My aspidistra was placed outside

for sunshine – not for you.

Your menu consists of laying pellets,

kitchen scraps and wheat.

The seat, my seat, situated outside

the front door, catches the first

of the morning’s rays. I enjoy

coffee and newspaper in that chair.

Please inform the rooster, the cocky one

with the crooked spur, not to perch there –

evidence is difficult to discover in the dark.

Yours faithfully seems a token gesture

when my fine new boots, and Levi’s , are wet

and pegged on the clothes line

in the moonlight.

I’ll mail this letter in the morning –

nail it, in fact – with recipes for à la King

and cacciatore, to the handle of the blunted,

rusted axe leaning against the woodshed door.

Golden Orb

Photograph by Shannon Brandt, Geraldton WA, 2010